The team is proud to announce the release of MATE Desktop 1.6. This release is
a giant step forward from the 1.4 release. In this release, we have replaced
many deprecated packages and libraries with new technologies available in
GLib. We have also added a lot of new features to MATE. We would like to thank
every MATE contributor and user.

Main changes in 1.6 are:

systemd & logind support

Added support for systemd-logind in mate-session-manager, mate-screensaver
and mate-power-manager (now you can reboot/shutdown without ConsoleKit)

Caja (file manager)

Improved places sidebar

Added support for new thumbnailers specification

Added a new frame for thumbnails

Wallpapers are now cached for a better memory management

New connect server dialog from Nautilus 3

Added support for freedesktop.org

File Manager DBus Interface

Fixed back vs parent directory selection

Open terminal extension now support opening a remote terminal

Panel

Added --run-dialog option to open the run dialog window Window list: you can
use the mouse middle click button to close a window Workspace switcher:

Added an option to wrap around between workspaces with the mouse wheel

Added a simple way for distributions to override the default panel layout
Unfortunately, due to migration to GSettings, you will lose your current panel layout.
All other settings will be migrated if you have MateConf 1.4 installed.

We believe MATE is a perfect match for Salix. MATE provides us with a familiar
desktop environment that is powerful, solid and fast. Also, the MATE team are
very friendly and a pleasure to work with and this means a lot to us. Thanks for
giving us the choice of sticking with our favourite desktop guys

It’s extremely important to us that people are happy with their computer. When that
environment we all loved and worked hard to improve since 2006 was
discontinued we weren’t happy to let it go and to ask people to migrate to
something new or something different. We worked really hard on making sure our
users could continue to use their computer the way they wanted and we met a
team of like-minded people who had taken the initiative to support that
environment and to develop it even further. Mint and MATE go hand in hand and
the relationship between the teams is excellent. Mint played an important role
in the promotion and backing of MATE and we continue to help with its
development. We’re very pleased with MATE, it’s exactly what we wanted, it
started where GNOME left off and with each new iteration it keeps getting better.

We don’t like how upstream forced changes to users and want our users to have
the option to decide what to use. With MATE in our repositories we are certain
our users can always choose what works best for them.

Ever since the release of Fedora 15 was released I was extremely unhappy and
frustrated with my desktop experience until I discovered MATE. Now on Fedora I
can finally have a desktop that is sane, stable, fast and most importantly easy
to use. With the hard work the team has done to also patch compiz to work on
the newer releases of Fedora I can now have my Fedora 14 (considered by most to
be the best release of Fedora) experience back with wobbly windows, desktop
cube, animations, and 3d effects. I can’t stress how big of a loss this was to many users including
myself. Now with MATE I don’t have to worry about what is going to break with
the next Gnome release and what crazy design ideas they are going to have
making me have to relearn a desktop interface every single Fedora release.
With MATE 1.6 I can feel right back at home on my favorite Linux distribution
and get back to work.

We are really happy to use the MATE Desktop Environment. This way we can keep a clean and well
working desktop without lots of useless and distracting stuff. Until the end
of 2012 our whole company were working with Ubuntu, but with the Unity Desktop
and many other “end user features”, we were searching for new ways to get a
desktop, free of software that pretends to make our lives easier. With MATE
Desktop on Debian 7 Wheezy, we found a good working, high performance desktop
that just works as we know it from years. We hope that the MATE Team will keep
our classic Linux Desktop and bring to it new life some with new features, but
with the good workflow kept in hand. So far, they have done great job, and we
hope that soon the Debian Maintainers will add the MATE Desktop to their
mirrors (and of course, that many others will use MATE too!).

MATE 1.6 is the result of 8 months of intense development and contains 1800
contributions by 39 people, and more than 150 translators.